PCDATA

Parsed Character Data (PCDATA) is a data definition that originated in Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and is used also in Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Type Definition (DTD) to designate mixed content XML elements.

#PCDATA in XML DTD

In XML DTD, #PCDATA is the keyword to specify mixed content, meaning an element may contain character data as well as child elements in arbitrary order and number of occurrences.^[1] For example: t so, #PCDATA itself is not a semantic term for character data; it can only appear as the leading syntactic construct in mixed content definitions. The following usages are improper:

<! -- illegal usages -->
<!ELEMENT p (a|#PCDATA|b)*  -- use it in the middle -- >
<!ELEMENT p (#PCDATA,a)     -- use it in sequence  -- >
<!ATTLIST p
          title  PCDATA     -- use it in attribute type-->

See also

• CDATA

References

1. ^ Mixed content in XML DTD